In a television display capable of operation with standard (1H or SD) and high definition television (2H or HD) signals and including an on-screen TV Guide, synchronization problems can result as a consequence of standard definition (1H) scanning frequency up conversion, the TV Guide and on screen display (OSD) inter-relationships. An on-screen-display based TV Guide provides a list of available channels, and by use of a cursor, the list can be browsed up or down whilst monitoring a preview of the channel in a 1/9 size picture in picture or PIP. Once the desired channel is found and highlighted, a single button press clears the Guide and displays a full-screen version of the selected channel. In this exemplary receiver, the main NTSC path is digitized at 1H and then up-converted to 2H. The standard TV Menus that are used to control picture parameters like: Color, Tint, Volume, etc. are generated and are inserted by means of a “2H OSD” function located in a video processing IC which generates 2H RGB outputs for coupling to the picture tube. Typically the addition of an on-screen-display TV Guide would be achieved at 2H, however use of an available 1H on-screen-display generator IC necessitated on-screen-display (OSD) insertion into the main signal prior to sync separation and analog to digital conversion. Because the display system operates at 2H, a standard 1H horizontal PLL. and vertical countdown system are not available. As an alternative, the 1H horizontal and 1H vertical sync signals for the Guide OSD are generated by a digital sync separator in the 1H Video Decoder and analog to digital converter IC. In the case that a signal was present in the main video path, the system works properly with the Guide OSD being stably positioned on screen, for example, centered both vertically and horizontally on the screen without any tearing or unwanted motion in the characters. However, when video signals are absent from the main video path, horizontal and vertical sync signals generated by the Video Decoder can become erratic and spuriously timed. These erroneous sync signals result from a digital sync separator in the Video Decoder attempting to lock to noise occurring in the absence of a signal. Because the digital sync separator does not employ a countdown system, the period between verticals is often other than the standard interval of 16.7 mille seconds. As a result, the Guide OSD and PIP preview channel are unstable and essentially unusable. The digital sync separator provides a selectable free run mode, however, non-random noise present during the absence of a demodulated signal precluded selection of the free run mode resulting in the generation of erroneous sync signals.